The foundations of your sales strategy

A comprehensive sales strategy is the backbone of any consultative business – it’s your North Star.

Whether your focus is immediate revenue, growth over time, or even fixing a sales engine that has stalled, the right strategy provides clarity, direction, and scalability.

It can be easy to focus on the actual engine, but what about the overarching strategy?

Focus and context: Defining the purpose of your strategy

Defining the scope of your strategy is critical, and avoids you diving headfirst into execution without direction. Is it a short-term strategy focused on immediate wins, or a long-term roadmap aiming to secure sustainable growth??

A short-term strategy could be used when businesses need quick wins or have immediate goals, such as meeting end-of-year targets or re-energising stagnant sales teams. This type of strategy is short, sharp, and punchy – aiming to nail down the deliverables before the strategy is out of date.

However, a long-term strategy is more common in businesses setting themselves up for sustained growth, aiming to capture market share over the next financial year or beyond.

Understanding your purpose is key: Are you aiming for high growth? Is this about survival or simply rebooting a lagging sales engine??

Clarifying this contextualises the strategy’s importance and aligns the sales function with the business’s broader goals.?

For example:

• If the strategy is built for high growth, it will likely prioritise aggressive expansion tactics, new client acquisition, and sector expansion.
• If it’s about survival, the focus will be on retaining existing customers, optimising current deals, and improving operational efficiency.

Once you have a clear understanding of the purpose, you can align it with the overall business performance and define the sales gap — the distance between current results and your business’s growth aspirations.

Vision and outcomes: Setting big goals and breaking them down

Visualising what your strategy will achieve is the next step, and is crucial in setting the destination. This includes defining the big revenue goals for the business and then breaking them down into actionable objectives that the sales team can work toward.?

Start by identifying the net new revenue your business needs to generate, and you can do this by analysing your current client base and forecasted growth.

Then, break down this goal into smaller, manageable targets, such as:

• Monthly revenue objectives
• New business development in specific sectors
• Types of deals that contribute to revenue (e.g., project-based vs. retainer-based work)

By breaking the big number into these smaller, digestible parts, your team can stay motivated and focused. This also enables you to track progress and pivot if necessary.

Strategic Pillars: Aligning with business values and differentiation

Your strategic pillars are the foundational elements of your sales strategy that align with your company’s value proposition and market position. They reflect what makes your business unique and help guide your team in how to go to market.

First things first, you need to think about differentiation. A focus on the characteristics of your business that make you stand out in the marketplace. This could include your expertise, technology, customer service, or even niche market focus.?

To ensure you have a sharp focus on your strategy, it goes without saying that a light competitive analysis can help identify white space — areas where your business can operate with less direct competition. This allows you to create messaging and offers that cut through the noise and give you a competitive advantage.

By establishing strong strategic pillars, your sales team can consistently communicate your unique value and create meaningful engagements with prospects.

Sales Channels: Choosing the right outbound tactics

A modern B2B sales strategy needs to incorporate multiple channels, but the focus here is on outbound sales channels that you can control and scale.

Outbound channels can include methods such as cold emailing, LinkedIn prospecting and outreach, channel partnerships, and network-based selling. The key thing to remember here is that they are all scalable and measurable which then allows for greater predictability.

Scalability and sustainability are pillars of any successful engine, and your chosen channels need to be the ones that can grow with the business and offer reliable results over time. It’s not and never will be about casting a wide net – it’s about building a repeatable process that delivers consistent leads.

None of this works if you’re defining and tracking the right metrics. You should aim to define metrics that track each channel’s performance at a granular level. This allows you to adjust your approach based on data rather than assumptions (and we all know where assumptions get us).

These channels should work together seamlessly to build a pipeline of qualified leads that can convert into long-term clients – but it requires consistency, control, and a whole lot of effort.

The offer: Structuring gateway products and upsell opportunities

Your offer needs to be tailored to how new prospects engage with your business. It’s important to distinguish between gateway products — smaller, introductory offers — and your core services.

Gateway products are low-risk, low-cost offerings designed to build trust with prospects. Given that strangers are unlikely to immediately purchase high-ticket services, gateway products allow you to create an entry point for deeper engagement instead of battering the door down. It’s all about selling from the inside, not going door to door with a huge price point.

Once the relationship is established, you can offer higher value products or services now that you’ve proven you can do the job and built trust.

The strategy should outline how you intend to ladder up from gateway to core services, always delivering an ever increasing amount of value to the client.

The goal is to design an offer structure that accelerates sales velocity by making it easy for prospects to say “yes” to the first step.

Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) and industry focus

Understanding who you’re selling to is critical for aligning your strategy with market needs. Define your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) by answering key questions like:

• What industries are they in?
• What are their primary business challenges?
• Who are the decision-makers and influencers within their organisation?

Next, define your primary sectors and geographies. Identify sectors where you already have traction and sectors where you see growth potential. Your strategy should differentiate between buyers and influencers, and the campaigns you design will reflect the different ways you engage these groups.

Critical Pillars and Market Challenges

Sales messaging must be consistent across every touchpoint, so establish your critical pillars early. These are the key challenges your prospects face and how your business solves them.

By addressing market challenges that resonate with your ICP, your team can deliver consistent and compelling messages, from initial outreach to closing. These pillars form the DNA of your marketing materials, sales scripts, and client interactions.

Enablers: Highlighting your USPs

Your enablers are the unique selling propositions (USPs) that give you an edge in the marketplace. These USPs help your team handle objections and differentiate your business during the sales process.

• Define your enablers based on factors like technology, processes, or expertise.
• Ensure that your team is equipped with these talking points to use throughout the sales cycle.

Enablers also serve as a tactical toolbox for driving conversations and handling client concerns, helping to close deals faster.

Rhythm and accountability: The engine that drives success

A successful sales strategy is nothing without execution, and the key to execution is rhythm. Define clear roles and responsibilities for everyone involved in the sales engine, from business development reps to account managers.

Creating a predictable cadence for sales activities builds rhythm into your weekly routine. Weekly check-ins, pipeline reviews, and regular touchpoints all ensure that momentum is maintained and everyone stays on track. This is a crucial part of sales culture – which as we know, is half the battle.

Accountability is also a huge part of sales culture, and assigning ownership for different elements of the strategy builds that. Each member of the team should understand their role and how their work contributes to the bigger picture.

Without a well-defined rhythm, even the best-laid plans can fall flat on their face. Forward momentum and energy are critical for hitting targets and driving growth.

Let’s wrap this up

There is no one-size-fits-all blueprint for growth, but a robust sales strategy is the closest thing you’ll get to a map for success. It must incorporate growth, differentiation, and market penetration though, otherwise, you’ll be missing key elements.

As you begin to build or refine your strategy, remember to:

1. Define the purpose of your strategy, whether short-term or long-term.

2. Align your sales goals with the larger business vision.

3. Break down revenue targets into achievable steps.

4. Choose scalable and sustainable sales channels.

5. Structure your offers to start with gateway products and build toward long-term client relationships.

6. Identify your ideal customer profile and focus on the industries and geographies where you can win.

7. Build your messaging around the critical market challenges you solve.

8. Equip your team with the enablers that make your business stand out.

9. Ensure you have a clear rhythm in place to drive momentum and accountability.

Taking these steps will set your business up with a well-rounded sales engine that is scalable, sustainable, and perfectly aligned with your business’s growth objectives.

Start small, focus on execution, and iteratively build a strategy that delivers results over time.